The exhaust manifold bolts on my Cadillac 500 were seized up and crystalized (if that's a suitable description for the situation) and stretched my dirty-word vocabulary to the maximum. Getting them out intact was impossible. It didn't take much torque at all to twist the danged things off and that's just what I did to five or six of them. I finally quit trying and took the heads to my machine shop guy and learned pretty quick that those guys are not happy when they find broken off "easy-outs" in the holes.

When I went to pick them up I asked him how the heck he got them out and he said "Man, I couldn't do it, and we tried everything we knew, so we had to "heli coil" them.

That was two years ago and I haven't had any problems, but this thread got me wondering if the job could have been done using extraction rod. I had never heard of the procedure.

Incidentally, I think Helicoils are a big fraud perpetrated on guys like me.


Jim